He's going to get you.
(Credit: compilarizTVi/YouTube Screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET)
A dog might be a man’s best friend.
A cat, not so much.
It’s not merely that cats can be mercilessly self-centered beings. It’s that their hair might help convict you, should you be accused of a heinous crime.
In what’s said to be the first ever case of cat hair helping to catch a U.K. killer, scientists in Britain worked using a cat DNA database to identify cat hair found on a corpse.
As the Associated Press reports, the dismembered torso of David Guy was found stuffed in bag on a beach in July 2012. The Hampshire police worked hard to match the cat hair found around Guy’s body with a cat that belonged to a suspect, David Hilder.
But the DNA drawn from the cat hair was mitochondrial DNA, and lots of cats share this DNA.
Jon Wetton, a geneticist with the University of Leicester who created the cat DNA database, explained to the Daily Mail: “Within each cat hair are two types of DNA, individual-specific ‘nuclear DNA,’ detectable in the roots of some larger hairs, and ‘mitochondri… [Read more]
Related Links:
Surplus computing power on your Android? Donate it to science
Is a real-life ‘Sharknado’ possible?
Even with EFF’s Congressphone, activism is a hard sell
Faster brain scans offer new perspective on brain activity
Don’t worry, get Happier? This social network aims for the sunny side
     |
Post a Comment